A common origin would inevitably lead to a common diet. Instead of this, what do we see? Each species has its narrowly limited tastes, which have no reference to the tastes of the cognate species. If they are related through a common ancestry, it is absolutely impossible to understand why, of our two Capricorns, one is allotted the oak and the other the hawthorn and the cherry-laurel; why, of our three Saperdæ, the first demands the black poplar, the second the elm and the third the dead cherry-tree. This gastric independence loudly proclaims independence of origin. And simple common sense, not always welcome to the adventurous theorists, is of the same opinion. CHAPTER XI THE DWARFS A Provençal proverb says: “Chasque toupin trobo sa cubercello; Chasque badan, sa badarello.” It is true; every pot finds its lid, every Jack his Jill. The hunchbacked, the blind, the bandy-legged, the physically or morally deformed: one and all have their attractions which render them acceptable in certain eyes. Insects too, no less than men and stew-pans, always find their natural complement, though it mate the faultless with the faulty. Of this Minotaurus Typhœus furnishes a splendid example. The hazards of excavation present me with a curious couple, keeping house at the bottom of a burrow. The female calls for no special remark: she is just a handsome matron. But the male! What a sorry creature, what an abortion! The middle point of his trident is reduced to a mere spiked granule; those at the side come just level with the eyes, whereas in normal subjects they reach the extreme point of the head. I measure the little beggar. His length is twelve millimetres [72] instead of eighteen, [73] the ordinary size. According to these figures, the dwarf is barely a quarter of the usual bulk. In an earlier chapter of the present volume, I mentioned a magnificent male Minotaur who was obstinately refused by the consort whom my experiments had given him. The handsome horn-bearer did not leave the burrow; the other, despite my frequent interventions to restore harmony in the household, deserted her home nightly and sought to set up house elsewhere. I had to give her another partner; the one that I had thrust upon her did not suit her. If the male endowed with a generous stature and trident is often refused, how did the miserable specimen under consideration win the affections of his powerful mate? The unequal associations are doubtless to be explained among the Dung-beetles as among ourselves: love is blind. Would this ill-assorted pair have bred? And would one part of the family have inherited the noble dimensions of the mother and the other the stunted dimensions of the father? Not possessing, at the moment, a suitable apparatus, that is to say, a tall column of earth held between four planks, I lodged my Beetles in the longest test-tube among my entomological glass-ware, with moist sand and victuals at their disposal.